by Graham Marks
To Julia and Hatijeh, the best of friends
My thanks also go to The Triumvirate:
Jenny, Megan and Rebecca – without whom
all this would not have happened
First published in the UK in 2009 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England.
www.usborne.com
epub edition © 2010
Copyright © Graham Marks, 2009
The right of Graham Marks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.
Cover illustration by Mick Brownfield.
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781409532064
Batch no. 00550-1
CONTENTS
1 21.44, 15TH AUGUST 1927, PARIS
2 THE ORIENT EXPRESS
3 THE ELEGANT LADY
4 ONE STORY ENDS...
5 THE DAY TRIP
6 “WHERE EAST MEETS WEST, SON!”
7 EVERY CLOUD...
8 SPOTTED!
9 EYES IN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD
10 FROM BAD TO WORSE
11 THE VISITOR
12 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
13 WHERE TO NOW?
14 DISASTER!
15 THE MYSTERY DEEPENS...
16 ...AND THE PLOT THICKENS
17 ON THE MOVE
18 SO NEARLY THERE
19 MAKING PLANS
20 MAKING MOVES
21 UPS AND DOWNS
22 INS AND OUTS
23 A LONG WAY TO GO
24 IRONS IN THE FIRE
25 THE LONG ROAD
26 MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT
27 BULLETS FLY
28 LINES CONVERGE
29 AN UNEXPECTED RENDEZVOUS
EPILOGUE
ALSO BY GRAHAM MARKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1 21.44, 15TH AUGUST 1927, PARIS
T. Drummond MacIntyre III, son of T. Drummond MacIntyre II (Senior Vice President of MacIntyre, MacIntyre & Moscowitz Engineering, of Chicago, Atlanta and New York City), sat on a bench, trying his best to give the impression he had his nose in the most recent copy of Black Ace magazine – if there was anything better to read than detective fiction, he had, in his opinion, yet to find it.
As he pretended to read he kept his eyes peeled for the man he’d spotted. The man, wearing a sharply-tailored, black double-breasted suit and a dark grey fedora, who also had a pencil mustache...and who he was sure he’d seen on the boat train and at the station in London.
Each time he’d noticed him, the man had turned and, like a shadow, slipped out of sight. He was sure the guy was following them, but why he’d follow him and his father he couldn’t figure out. His pop helped his pop, Gramps, run the family company, which made machines which made machines. That kind of thing. He was not the kind of person who got followed by men in dark grey fedoras; unfortunately, in Trey’s opinion.
Aware of exactly, word for word, what his father would say to him if he left the bench to investigate these curious circumstances, Trey gritted his teeth and stayed put. He could solve this mystery, if only he was allowed to, but his father was no fan of his ambitions to be a private eye, or of Black Ace, for that matter, and would no doubt confiscate the magazine, given the opportunity. So he actually did start to read, which was no hardship as there was the second part of The Snarl of the Beast, a Trent “Pistol” Gripp story, in this issue. And Trent Gripp was the bee’s knees when it came to sleuths and gumshoes, the kind who generally always shot first and hardly ever bothered to ask questions later...
“Time to go, son!”
Trey looked up to see his father as he marched past him across the concourse of the Gare de Lyon, making for the platform where the Simplon Orient Express was waiting to depart on its journey to Constantinople at 22.20 sharp.
T. Drummond MacIntyre II was in something of a hurry, and it showed; there was a schedule to keep to, his ramrod posture and clicking heels seemed to say, and by heaven that was what was going to happen! Some holiday this was turning out to be, was all T. Drummond III (generally known by one and all as Trey) could think.
This trip had been sold to him by his mother as “a golden opportunity” to spend some time with his father on an “educational holiday”, and if you wanted his opinion, Trey MacIntyre had more than somewhat been sold a pup. For a start there was no such animal as an “educational holiday” because, as anyone with half a brain knew, a holiday was time off from education! But Trey had been prepared to let that point go as he really was looking forward to being with his pop. Except that everywhere they went his father always seemed to have business that just had to be done – telegrams to pore over, wires to send, phone calls to take and make, letters to write and people who demanded to be met.
So, while his mother did whatever it was you did when you visited friends in Bel Air, California – his parents did not normally have separate holidays, but, as his mother claimed to get seasick in the bath, a trip across the Atlantic was never going to be on her agenda – Trey had travelled first by train from Chicago to New York. Here, at the window of his father’s office suite in the Woolworth Building (“The tallest building in the world, son, all 792 feet of it!”) he had watched, boggle-eyed, as thirty-three floors below, Broadway was turned into the Canyon of Heroes by the incredible ticker-tape parade – a sight he’d only ever seen before in smudgy newspaper photos – for the heroic flyer Charles Lindbergh. It was hard to make out much through the blizzard of thin strips of newsprint streamers being thrown out of windows, but he had personally seen the very first man to fly solo across the Atlantic! Now that was what he called an educational experience!
From then on, apart from the sea voyage, First Class, over to Liverpool, England, on the RMS Aquitania – five days, and some, which was rather more than Mr. Lindbergh’s thirty-three and a half hours to Paris – the holiday had settled into a somewhat duller pattern. He had been taken on a car trip round various Scottish castles – Scotland being the land of his forefathers, as he’d constantly been reminded by his actual father. From Edinburgh (“the Athens of the North, son, the Athens of the North”, which didn’t, thought Trey, say much for Athens itself) they’d gone on to visit London (rainy) and had taken the boat train over the Channel to Paris (also rainy, but with garlic and bad plumbing).
And everywhere they went there were always meetings, meetings, and yet more meetings (who knew engineering was so much about talking and not about making things?). But maybe, thought Trey, as he stopped while his father instructed the porters which of their trunks were to go to the compartment and which to the baggage car, the same would not be the case while they were on this part of the trip. No telephones, no colleagues, offices or business to do on the Orient Express...and hopefully the food would be better than the frankly dull stuff that had been served up in a lot of the swanky hotels and houses they’d stayed at. Most of the restaurants his father liked to eat
in never, ever served ketchup or proper yellow mustard, let alone a hamburger and French fries, or a hot dog and onions, to put them on.
According to the man from Thomas Cook, this trip to Constantinople (“Where the East meets the West, Mr. MacIntyre – two continents in one city!”) should take them about a week, all being well. Trey had no idea why the original itinerary (a rather dull-sounding trip to the Côte d’Azur, with visits to a bunch of vineyards, then back to London via Paris) had been changed, but figured it had to do with business (what, in his father’s life didn’t?) and he had to say he’d no complaints as this new route did sound a lot more exciting. The map that Trey’s father had given him showed they’d be going from Paris to Lausanne, in Switzerland, then across the border into Italy and on to Milan and Venice, where they would be stopping for a day or so.
“‘Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice,’” his father had told him the night before, smiling as he read from a book, “‘there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors’! Henry James said that...”
Trey had no idea who Henry James was, and the information served only to make him wonder why his father was so keen they should go to Venice, and what other unpleasantness might be waiting there for them once they arrived – more than likely more museums, galleries and theatres, of which he’d seen enough to last a lifetime, to his way of thinking.
After Venice they still had the cities of Belgrade and Sofia to pass through before reaching their final destination, and all Trey hoped was that, if the journey ended up turning out to be a bore, his father wouldn’t stop him from reading his magazines. He’d brought a number of them with him, in fact almost enough to fill one of his cases, all of which his father regarded as worthless trash.
“Trey – stop daydreaming and get on board, son!”
Trey looked up and saw his father calling over his shoulder to him from the steps leading up into the gleaming blue carriage; as he began to follow him onto the train an odd feeling that he was being watched made him turn round, and what he saw stopped him dead in his tracks...the man was there again, some little way down the platform, staring right back at him, his dark, slitted eyes flicking from him to his father!
“Trey!” his father barked.
Quite sure that Trent Gripp would have been straight up the platform to find out who the man was and why he’d been putting the eye on him, Trey, on the other hand, had no option but to do as he was told...
2 THE ORIENT EXPRESS
At precisely 22.20 the train heaved itself into motion, the start of the journey heralded by a lot of clanking and the screeching of steel on steel as the wheels bit on the rails, all accompanied by the slow but steadily building pulse of the massive steam engine up front. As soon as he could, Trey got out of their fully-appointed sleeper compartment, which was situated towards the front of the train, and set off to explore the rest of the carriages. At least that’s what he told his father he was doing.
What he was actually up to was trying to find out if The Man With the Pencil Mustache (as the story would be called if it was in Black Ace magazine) had got on the train with them. And if he had, was he following them? And if he was – why? These questions demanded to be answered and Trey figured that this was a very good time to do some snooping, when everyone was, like his father, trying to sort themselves out – searching for misplaced luggage, remembering what they’d left behind and complaining about their accommodation to the harassed steward; under these circumstances, no one was going to pay too much attention to some kid.
The first thing Trey noticed was that, unfortunately, there were a few other kids around his age on board, which meant he was probably going to have to put up with his father trying to make him get to know them. Even if they didn’t speak a word of English. Which, seeing as they were in France, for heaven’s sake, was highly likely. And he did not need any new friends, especially ones chosen for him purely by circumstance, something his father consistently failed to understand.
Pushing on, Trey made his way towards the rear of the train. Monsieur Mustache, as Trey now thought of him, was nowhere to be seen in any of the sleeping compartments ahead of the dining car (although a lot of them did have their doors shut, and he made a note of which they were so he could check them out later); the mystery man wasn’t in the dining car either, which wasn’t altogether a surprise as they weren’t actually serving food yet, so Trey carried on with his search.
Eyes peeled, he sauntered along the gently swaying corridors, the engine picking up speed as they began to hurtle through the night towards Switzerland, and by the time he’d reached the baggage car there was still no sign of Monsieur Mustache. Trey was sure he’d been as dedicated and professional a snoop as any of the gumshoes he read about, which meant that the man was either in one of the cabins he’d not yet seen the inside of, or – and he really did not want to consider this possibility, but knew he had to – maybe the man hadn’t got on the train and had never been following them in the first place.
Trey, shoulders slumped, was just pondering this thought when the door next to him, which led to the baggage car, opened and a man came out. He was dressed in a black double-breasted suit, had on a dark grey fedora and sported a pencil mustache and Trey was so glad to see him he almost cheered out loud.
“E’scuse me,” the man said, in an obviously foreign accent; he smelled of heavy, dark tobacco and cologne and his black hair, Trey noticed as he went past, shone with pomade like it had been polished.
He hadn’t given Trey a second look...but did that mean the man was just not repeating the mistake he’d made on the platform when he had been spotted staring, or that he really didn’t give a darn?
Letting the man have half a carriage start, Trey began to follow to see where he went and whom he might talk to, traipsing behind him until the man stopped by a carriage exit door; he lit a stubby, yellow cigarette with a match and stared out at the passing night, the pungent smoke drifting down the corridor. Trey hung back, racking his brains trying to think what to do next – mooch around and try to appear like he was supposed to be there? Walk on past Monsieur Mustache?
And then a hand gripped his shoulder, and he froze...
“Monsieur MacIntyre? Votre père...excusez moi...your father, ’e is looking for you, young man.”
Trey turned round and saw one of the conductors looking down at him. “My father?”
“Exactement, ’e was worried, telling me you ’ave been quelques minutes...some time.” The man examined his fob watch as if to emphasize the point, and then made a shooing motion with his hands. “Il attend...’e is waiting for you in the restaurant car. You ’ad better go.”
Trey nodded, mumbled a “Merci, Monsieur” and then, as the conductor walked away, he saw that his target had disappeared! Resisting the urge to run, Trey walked as fast as he could, desperately trying to catch sight of Monsieur Mustache. He was nowhere in sight, but as Trey hurried past one particular cabin, cursing his luck and the conductor’s bad timing, he got a sudden, strong whiff of cigarette smoke. Smoke from that yellow cigarette, he was sure of it!
Fishing out his pocket notebook and reporter’s pencil, Trey made a quick note of the carriage and room number and then hurried on towards the dining car and the inevitable lecture from his father about punctuality, reliability and tardiness...
3 THE ELEGANT LADY
It was at lunchtime the next day, somewhere in between Milan and Venice, that Trey saw Monsieur Mustache again. The man, who was sitting at a table in the dining car when he and his father came in, had his back to them, but Trey knew exactly who it was: no one else on the train had hair that shiny. And now he also knew his name.
Trey had not wasted his morning. This time, when his father had hauled a sheaf of papers out of his attaché case and uncapped his fountain pen, he hadn’t sighed and rolled his eyes because this gave him the excuse he’d been looking for to leave his father to whatever work he just had to do and go investigating.
There
had been a Ne Pas Déranger sign on what he thought was Monsieur Mustache’s room when he’d gone past and Trey hadn’t found him anywhere else on the train, which had meant that there wasn’t much else he could do except go back to his own cabin and read, or watch the Italian countryside go by out of the window. It was as he disconsolately made his way towards his own carriage, dragging his feet, that he spotted the box of matches on the ground.
He stopped and lifted the nearby ashtray cover. Inside were a couple of yellow cigarette butts which, from the smell, had quite recently been stubbed out. Deduction? Why that Monsieur Mustache had not long ago been out for a smoke!
Trey bent down, picked up the matchbox and examined it; the glossy black cover with gold lettering advertised something called La Plume Indigo Cabaret and closer inspection revealed that, while it sounded full, it in fact contained only spent matches. Another deduction: Monsieur Mustache was a somewhat tidy man. And the find gave Trey an idea.
He set off and eventually found a door with a small black and white enamel sign on it which read Bureau de Steward – the Steward’s Office. Trey knocked on the door, aware that Trent Gripp would probably just have walked in; it opened to reveal the office to be more of a cubbyhole, really, in which a tiny desk, a chair and the steward himself just about all fitted. Acting as innocent and honest as he possibly could, he handed in the “lost property”, which he said he believed belonged to the man back in Room 6, the one with the grey hat.
“That’s right, isn’t it, Monsieur?” Trey asked, smiling his most open and sincere smile.
“Numéro six?” the steward replied, arching one eyebrow; then, making a face like he’d smelled an old sock, he glanced from the matchbox in Trey’s hand to the list on the wall behind him. “You must mean Monsieur Giovedi...”
“That’s him,” beamed Trey, holding out the matchbox. “Will you give this back to him – I would’ve, but it said ‘Do not derange’ on his door, and I didn’t want to make him mad...”
